Viewing Sections in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Explore viewing Sections in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Author:Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

OS: Mac OS X

Date Created: March 23, 2015Last Updated: March 23, 2015

If your presentation has a number of
Sections, you may find it
little difficult to reorder your Sections by just
dragging and dropping. Or you may even find it difficult to see all Sections at the same time. This happens because there may be
many slides within each of these Sections. So when you see slides within a single Section, you may not be able to see anything
within another Section, as shown in Figure 1. And if you want to drag a slide from one Section to another, you
may be at a loss to comprehend what you will end up with.

So to counter this problem, you can collapse and expand single and multiple Sections, as explained in this tutorial:

First open your presentation within which you have already
added Sections. Change to
Slide Sorter view, as shown in
Figure 1 above - so that you can easily access the Sections.

Then first Collapse your Sections so that you only see the Section names without any slides, are visible. Then you can easily
drag the Section to the required position. There are two ways to collapse and expand Sections in
PowerPoint 2011, as explained in this tutorial:

Collapse/Expand a Single Section

To collapse a particular section, first click on its name. We clicked on the section called "Introduction", as
shown in Figure 2, below. Then, click the small downward pointing arrow that you can see in front of its name,
as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2.

Figure 2: Downward pointing arrow in front of the Section name

This collapses all slides within that particular section, and you will see only the name of the Section and no slides at all,
as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3 (compare with Figure 2, above). Also notice
that the downward pointing arrow now points rightwards (see the "Introduction" Section in Figure 3, below).

Figure 3: Selected section collapsed

Now, to expand the selected Section, click the same rightward pointing arrow in front of its name, as shown highlighted in
red within Figure 4.

Figure 4: Rightward pointing arrow in front of the Section name

This will expand that particular Section making all the slides contained within visible, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Selected section expanded

Collapse/Expand All Sections Within a Presentation

To collapse/expand all Sections within a presentation in one go, first right-click (or Ctrl+click) on the name
of any Section. A contextual menu appears, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Options to collapse/expand all slides in the presentation

Within this contextual menu, you will find two options for collapsing/expanding the Sections: Collapse All
and Expand All, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 6.

Let us now explore both of these options:

Collapse All

This option collapses all Sections in the entire presentation, and you will see only
the names of the Sections and no slides, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Result of selecting Collapse All option

Expand All

This option expands all Sections in the entire presentation. Select a Section and right-click
(or Ctrl+click) on the name of any Section. A contextual menu appears, as shown in Figure 8.
Within this contextual menu, select the Expand All option, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Expand All option selected

This expands all Sections in the entire presentation, as shown in Figure 9.